Leverett Belknap
Leverett Belknap (September 29, 1851 - January 28, 1942) was one of Hartford's oldest and best known bookmen. He was at the time of his death a member of the Connecticut Historical Society, deacon emeritus and oldest member of the Immanual Congregational Church, and the oldest member of the Connecticut Society of Sons of the American Revolution, which he joined in the 1880s. Belknap was born on September 29, 1851, in Hartford, Connecticut, as the son of Leverett Belknap and Sally Boynton. He grew tired of formal schooling at the age of 12 and became a "holster" on the city's waterfront, driving the horses that helped unload schooners that made port there. Flavius A. Brown, after whom Brown School was named, an owner of Brown & Gross, booksellers, offered young Belknap a job as "handy man" in the book store, which he accepted a year later and began his career in the bookselling business in 1864. When he assumed his new duties at the store, the first book selling establishment in Hartford, he began to develop the liking for history and historical subjects which he retained throughout his life. The store, which was then located at the southwest corner of Main and Asylum Streets, was already an old firm, having been established in 1835, and listed among notables who had browsed among its shelvers, Abraham Lincoln and GIdeon Wells. In 1880, Belknap became a member of the firm, succeeding Brown, and the store changed its name to Belknap & Warfield. When Belknap retired in 1910, the name of the store became G. F. Warfield & Company, the title it retained until 1929 when it was renamed Witkower's. During the 46 years Belknap was active in the city's book business, he came to know personally many Hartford literary figures, including Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dudley Warner, Joseph R. Hawley, and Clyde Fitch. As the leading book dealer of the city during that time, he also corresponded with such writers as Whittier, Aldrich, Sarah Orne Jewett, Longfellow, Whitman, and Elihu Burritt, who at one time wrote him a long discourse on why Sanskrit should be the universal language. Belknap, who held in memory a large span of the city's history, himself did some writing. As a member of the Hartford Historical Society, he wrote an article on the history of Main Street, which was printed in The Courant in 1924. Although he was officially retired since 1910, Belknap made frequent trips to the bookstore of which he was once part owner and was a familiar sight browsing through many new books in the store up until the 1940s. He gained a wealth of knowledge and in recent years, he recalled experiences he had with these people in his bookstore. One of his favorite subjects was Mark Twain, who made a rendezvous of the Brown & Gross store's back room about the turn of the century. He liked to recall the noisy laughter that gave proof that Clemens was telling or listening to the boisterous stories in which he delighted. During an interview on the occasion of his 90th birthday in September 1941, Belknap said he planned to give his scrapbooks to the State Library "for the use of the public after I'm gone." On January 28, 1942, Belknap died at the home of his son, Charles, at 109 North Quaker Lane in West Hartford, Connecticut. Family Belknap married Margaret Seymour Swan on August 10, 1875. * Edward L. Belknap - m. Virginia Case * Charles H. Belknap - m. Bessie Hubbard